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The purpose of this paper is to describe a mathematical and computer model that has been developed by TransCanada for TransCanada Pipelines (TCPL) and for the Canadian Gas Potential Committee (CGPC) for future Canadian natural gas resource assessment work. It was developed in the contexts of developing a gas supply model for forecasting future Canadian gas supply for TCPL and of improving the CGPC's assessment methodologies and software. The model developed in this paper integrates two discovery process models used by the CGPC and solves the economic truncation problem for semi-mature to mature plays. It is based on applying techniques developed by G. M. Kaufman and J. D. Fuller and colleagues in new ways which extends the work of these authors. This model has a number of important advantages including: fast computational speed, integration of parametric and nonparametric statistical approaches, integration of the Kaufman and others model and the Arps-Roberts model, overcoming a PETRIMES limitation of a maximum of 1000 samples, providing a finding rate forecast for economic analysis and providing a fresh look at solving the economic truncation problem. The details of the new Modified Arps-Roberts Model (now known as the Truncated Discovery Process Model or TDPM for short) are discussed in this paper.

This introductory paper provides an outline of each of the papers published in this journal. These papers and additional talks were presented at the Canadian Gas Potential Committee Symposium on Resource Assessment Methodologies held on 10–12 April 2002; a paper summarizing the conference was published previously. In contrast to the summary paper, this introductory paper is focused on providing a more detailed description of the conference papers which were submitted for publication.